Virginia River Latest to Benefit From a Dam Removal

For the first time since before the Civil War, the graceful Rappahannock River flowed unchecked Monday from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay after Army explosive experts blasted open a 130-foot section of the Embrey Dam.

One minute, a glistening wall of water -- 22 feet high and 700 feet wide -- flowed over the dam into the gently running, greenish-brown water of the Rappahannock. Then, after one mini-blast and a second, much larger one an hour later, the lake behind the dam surged forward, sending churning white spray and muddy water past thousands of people gathered on the riverbanks to witness the spectacle.

“Today is the day we let the fish run upstream; today is the day we let the river run free,” exclaimed John Tippett, executive director of Friends of the Rappahannock, the local environmental group that spearheaded a multiyear effort to restore the river’s natural flow.

The demolition of Embrey Dam is symbolic of a growing trend of communities rallying around efforts to get rid of dams, many of which are no longer needed for power, drinking water or flood control.

The Embrey was the largest of at least 137 dams that have been removed since 1999, according to American Rivers, an environmental group that tracks restoration projects.

Its destruction was significant because it reestablished the longest free-flowing river -- 184 miles -- into the Chesapeake Bay, reopening traditional migrations of American shad, blueback herring, alewife and other fish that live in the bay and the Atlantic Ocean but return to fresh water to spawn.

As early as the 1700s, settlers tried to harness the Rappahannock’s rapids to power mills. The Embrey Dam was built in 1910 to create electricity and fuel the industrialization of this agricultural community, about 50 miles south of Washington.

But the hydroelectric station that brought power to Fredericksburg for decades was shut down in the 1960s. After that, the impoundment above the dam was used for drinking water, but the completion of a new water treatment center five years ago left the dam without a purpose.

“The river is most valuable in the state in which it was created, and we’re returning it to that state,” Bill Beck, Fredericksburg’s mayor, said just before the blasts freed the water.

City officials believe that the restoration of the river will draw more tourists to fish and paddle on the 25-mile stretch of the Rappahannock upstream from historic Fredericksburg, a rare length of river on the East Coast where bald eagles, otters and other wildlife outnumber houses, bridges and other development.

Once the water settles, state and federal officials say, there will be challenging rapids over a one-mile section that no one has seen since a wooden dam was built in 1853. The river drops 22 feet over that mile.

Experts at the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries expect that by demolishing the dam and stocking the river with native migratory fish, the depleted fisheries again will be abundant in a few years. The young migratory fish will provide plentiful prey for choice game fish -- like smallmouth bass and rockfish -- which also are expected to multiply as a result.

“We’re thrilled,” said Richard Kiehna, 47, an avid fisherman and canoeist and the vice chairman of Friends of the Rappahannock. “This is one of the best smallmouth bass fishing rivers on the East Coast, and it’s going to get unbelievably better.”

The Rappahannock restoration project follows the pattern of many other rivers, from California to Maine, over recent years, said Beverley Getzen, chief of the Office of Environmental Policy at the Army Corps of Engineers.

And the Corps, which primarily is known for construction projects that manage rivers, has found a new role in helping bring rivers back to their natural states.

“We’re finding some tremendous opportunities for restoration by removing some of these dams that you might say already should be decommissioned -- that no longer serve any useful purpose,” Getzen said. “We’re not only restoring fish runs, but also restoring the entire habitat around these areas.”

These projects often are not controversial, but the expense of removing the structures can be an obstacle, Getzen said.

In the case of the Embrey Dam, the money problem was solved after Friends of the Rappahannock won the support of Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.).

The environmentalists took Warner, a longtime fly fisherman, out on a canoe in the Rappahannock six years ago, and he pledged to help them remove the dam if they could show that the community was behind the effort.

As the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Warner was able to win congressional funding for the $10-million project.

Dams like Embrey, Warner said, have “served their purpose, they’ve served their time, and now they should be brought down.”

Over the next two years, the Corps is set to demolish the balance of the dam with heavy machinery and replant the banks of the river.

Several California dams await similar fates. Local and federal officials are working on a project to remove the Matilija Dam on the Ventura River, which formerly was used to store drinking water but now is filled with sediment. Its removal, which could start in the next few years if funding is secured, would open up a habitat for steelhead trout, which is listed as a threatened species, and provide sand for Ventura’s beaches.

Pacific Gas & Electric Co. has agreed to remove five of its eight hydropower dams on Battle Creek, a tributary of the Sacramento River near Redding. Conservation groups are pressing the company to remove all eight to open up more spawning habitats for the endangered spring chinook salmon and steelhead trout, said Steve Rothert, associate director of American Rivers’ dam project.

Next in line could be the San Clemente Dam on the Carmel River. The removal of this silted-up former drinking water supply would provide habitat for the threatened steelhead trout that, like the American shad in Virginia, have long been thwarted in their attempt to swim upriver to spawn.